NORML Meets With Former Mexican President

by Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive DirectorJuly 9, 2013

At a meeting with drug reform advocates in San Francisco, former Mexican President Fox expressed support for California’s efforts to legally regulate cannabis, medical and otherwise. He said that California has a strong cultural influence on Mexico, and that progress here would help efforts there.

Speakers included Dale Sky Jones for CCPR, Nate Bradley for LEAP and myself for California NORML, who noted that marijuana prohibition is an international problem founded on international treaties, which need to be fixed through international cooperation by the U.S., Mexico, and other countries. Many thanks to President Fox, Jamen Shively, and Steve DeAngelo for arranging this meeting. – Dale Gieringer, CA NORML

Former Mexican president Fox urges marijuana legalization

Source: Reuters – Tue, 9 Jul 2013 12:40 AM

By Ronnie Cohen

SAN FRANCISCO, July 8 (Reuters) – Former Mexican President Vicente Fox took his crusade to legalize marijuana to San Francisco on Monday, joining pot advocates to urge the United States and his own country to decriminalize the sale and recreational use of cannabis.

Fox met for three hours with the advocates, including Steve DeAngelo, the Oakland-based executive director of California’s largest marijuana dispensary, and former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively, who hopes to create a Seattle-based pot brand now that Washington state has legalized recreational use.

Legalization, Fox told reporters after the meeting, is the only way to end the violence of Mexican drug cartels, which he blamed on America’s war on drugs.

“The cost of the war is becoming unbearable – too high for Mexico, for Latin America and for the rest of the world,” Fox said in English.

Every day, he said, 40 young people are killed in drug-related violence.

Fox’s position on legalizing drugs has evolved over time since the days when he cooperated with U.S. efforts to tamp down production in Mexico during his 2000-2006 presidential term. He has been increasingly vocal in his opposition to current policies, backing two prior efforts to legalize marijuana in Mexico.

Mexico’s current president, Enrique Pena Nieto, has opposed legalization. But he recently said that he would consider world opinion on the matter, particularly in light of recent voter-approved initiatives to legalize marijuana in Washington state and Colorado for recreational use.

In San Francisco on Monday, Fox said he had signed on to attend and help develop an international summit later this month in Mexico to strategize a path to end marijuana prohibition.

Participants scheduled to attend the three-day meeting starting July 18 in San Cristobal include an American surgeon, the dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health and a Mexican congressman who plans to introduce a bill to legalize marijuana in Mexico this summer, Fox said.

The bill, which he expects to be introduced by Mexican lawmaker Fernando Belaunzaran, would legalize adult recreational use of marijuana, Fox said.

Support for legalizing marijuana in the United States has been growing. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws, according to the pro-legalization National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. But the drug remains illegal under federal law.

Lifting the prohibition on cannabis in Mexico, however, appears to face more of an uphill battle. Mexican lawmakers have rejected previous legalization efforts and polls have shown little popular support for the idea.

But Fox promised to wage what he said was a necessary battle.

“We cannot afford more blood and the loss of more young people,” Fox said. “We must get out of the trap we are in.” (Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Eric Walsh)

Unconstitutional is a word I have been seeing in the news over and over again. Hopefully we see news that the prohibition of cannabis is unconstitutional. I just read an article on HuffPost about the Mayor of Denver, he wants to add an additional 5-10% tax to legal sales on top of the 25% tax. He opposed legalization from the start.

Nieto and other CURRENT leaders in Mexico are too scared to come out and support legalization because of how bad the cartel problem has become there. The cartels have corrupted the government so bad, that politicians literally will be risking their lives if they come out supporting decriminalizing marijuana.

When you have growers that want to make the same profits or more than they did in the black market and politicians that want taxes based on law enforcement’s “street values” you are already have a retail price where the black market is cheaper.
If you want to take over an established market you have to price low enough to put the other guy out as any business owner will tell you and even though a lot of legislators are businessman and understand that they did not pass the law,in fact their political party and their corporate sponsors are probably opposed to it they realize they have the power to make sure it fails to produce any taxes by keeping the price so high street dealers can raise their prices.
Add an adviser that is a prohibitionist that was probably “suggested” by Holder when the governor went to see him about how WA could work out the differences between federal and state laws.
There is no doubt in my mind that Mark Kleiman knows about as much about starting up a legal market for marijuana as I do about brain surgery,,his “job” is to make sure the legal market fails to stop the black market and the state retail program doesn’t produce the taxes they hope for,,he is also trying to get the state to take over the MMJ market so he can derail it.

California’s cultural influence on Mexico is something one should be taken into account when enacting new laws and regulations in California, as what happens north of the border has an impact on those south of the border (example: NAFTA).

Raise your glass to helping snap the spine of the Cartel’s I5 Corridor.

I wish that the text of the bill gave more insight as to how grow-ops are going to operate. The horizontal integration of grow-ops and dispensaries was left (I assume) to the the auspices of the Oregon Health Authority, as was the fine tuning of the dispensaries themselves.

Before I get ahead of myself, let us hope for a gubernatorial signature.

If you’re holding all these high-power meetings with the rich and powerful on the international scene then get the international agreement crap dealt with. You big cheeses in the big money circles who are for legalization have to whisper in the ears of the right people. They sure ain’t listening to the little people like me, people in low places.

I want outright legalization without the shit of having to be fingerprinted. This 6 plant limit needds to be raised. It’s total bullshit to allow a person to grow only 6 plants. Maybe you can have 6 flowering females because statistically half of your regular seed will be males, which are good only for producing seed. If you want sinsemilla without using feminized seed, there’s no way just being able to plant 6 seeds at a time in an enclosed space, as stipulated in the Pennsylvania bills, is enough. I think Colorado is that way too. 6 plants, no way! I don’t want to have to have some inspector come in and check either. If you got no evidence that more than an ounce, as the bill stipulates, was transferred then you got no legal grounds to check anybody. And the bill states that the 6 have to be in an enclosed space. Does that mean indoor or also outdoors with a large fence and barbed wire and the whole 9 yards so people won’t raid it just before you is ready to harvest?

You rich people have plenty of money, but everyone knows the rich are never rich enough, and since all of the politicians are rich they don’t really care about the people scrounging at the bottom or people losing the American dream because the jobs are not there.

GET OUT OF THE WAY OF MAKING JOBS! GET OUT OF THE WAY OF SAVING LIVES!

The seeds have been planted, people are in the know on how to produce good natural medicine in so many states,now, we can imagine the herb that grows everywhere as the laws are still changing for the better daily, for mmj or mjpositive, free to take the herb and use it for healing.
Blessings
Michael lr

The saddest thing of all is the politics involved.We all have a goal in mind some want it to relax some want it for medication others want the issue off there plate and for some its a matter of life and death for themselves and for the very people they represent as a politition. All want to have there own way.The very reason this plant is illegal is because one man got his way not a group.I think this plant that has more uses than anyone could have had ever imagined and at the center of it all a plant that has been brought into exsistace by GOD himself.Man didn’t manufacture it. In its natural form it has all these capibilities that are being uncovered.If all facts could be considered without such discontent for each others goal it can be one of the greatest rediscovered plant out there.I think all can be satisfied with the truth brought to the table.Let those old warn out saying about the plant be thrown out,face it and thing can be abused even coffee we know they cannot smoke themselves to DEATH.Treat it like any other substance.The Medical field can study it like some countries have been.Let the Federal goverment give the states the responsibilty to tax as they wish and federal goverment would have a set tax amount for all the states and like any other thing each individual would be responsible for his or her actions legal or otherwise.I know this sound so repeated we have heard it before at the center of it all is for everyone to accept the TRUTH forget about what was told to you in the past hear the truth the saying its a gateway well the only way its a gateway is if they are introduced to it. NOT BY A NEED FOR HARDER DRUG.My goal would be for all those people that suffer with Cancer and pain and those disease that they are seeing great progress. See for me without all the medictions that I have to take for pain that have horrible side effects and damage to organs with long term use, but that’s me and I will wait and wait till its legal till maybe someone will be willing to listen to the truth and let those like myself have a choice.But those people with Cancer wont have time to wait and see I have lost Family,Friends to Cancer and its not pretty the testomonies of those that took the chance in some states and were CURED without the terrible side effects there the ones that cannot wait the kids at home with a parent with Cancer or a child himself or herself with a parent by there side are they going to be able to wait I don’t know but if we set aside are old ways of thinking or are people
worried that the voters won’t vote for me next time because I voted for this. Maybe if you pass the truth on maybe they will see you in a different light maybe one of there family will live because of your decision.Let us all hope the truth will win out!